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In the utter quiet, Ethel's voice was a haunted whisper as she unraveled the eerie tale of her encounter with Reginald Clarke to Ernest. The loaded silence that hovered afterwards seemed to open a secret passage between their souls, binding their separate pains into one shared agony through the inexplicable power of love.
Her fingers danced like wisps of moonlight across his hair and forehead, seeking in vain to chase away the ghostly visions that assaulted him from some abysmal depth. Memories surged like a deluge within him, mutely testifying to a truth more bone-chilling than any fiction. The puzzle of Ernest’s own creative torments, his play shadowed by nightmares, his failing novel once attributed to mental disorder—all crashed together into an inescapable reality that indicted Reginald Clarke for intellectual theft. Ernest’s mind replayed Abel Felton’s cryptic final words and Ethel’s piercing gaze that fateful night—their meanings now laid bare as if a malevolent spectral had been unshrouded.
Each of Walkham's accounts and Reginald's offhand comments about Shakespeare and Balzac now morphed into breadcrumbs leading straight to this twisted revelation.
But then, as if flickering through a fog, appeared another visage of Reginald—one veiled in poetic majesty. His speech flowed like honey, dripping phrases sweeter than nectar or the chimes of celestial bells. In this light, he regained his stature as an exalted mentor who never wielded malice, someone who had once lifted Ernest close to his vast heart.
"No," Ernest gasped out loud, fighting against the mauling dread, "this has to be a phantasmagoria—a dreadful, distorted vision."
"But he has owned up to it," Ethel reminded him sharply.
"Maybe he spoke in riddles," he countered desperately. "Don't we all soak up bits and pieces from others' thoughts? It isn’t outright thievery or evisceration of their intellects. Yeah, Reginald might wield some dark gift to imprint his essence on everyone he touches—like Shakespeare used to do. But it doesn’t add up; damn it! You’ve got it wrong! We've let our minds be seduced by a grotesque misinterpretation of what's essentially an unremarkable truth—barely a blip on the radar of disgrace. He might've toyed with the notion himself but taking it dead serious? That can't be right."
Do our own inner turmoils, Abel Felton's mysterious dread, and my own creeping doubts simply dissolve into thin air, shrugged off as inconsequential?
But when you really mull it over, the whole idea reeks of absurdity. It's an affront to scientific thought. It doesn't even veer into the realm of mesmerism. If he had claimed his sway over people was through hypnotism, that could paint a completely different picture. I can't argue that something feels amiss in Reginald Clarke's presence; his abode seems to leech away at my vitality. Yet we must consider that our nerves might be so frayed, teetering on the brink of hysteria.
Ethel, however, felt none of the conviction in his words.
"You're still caught in his web," she said with palpable worry.
Shaken but clinging to rationality, Ernest countered: "It's beyond my belief that Reginald, blessed with such an arsenal of literary talent that he turns the blandest words to gold, would stoop to poach another's thoughts. Suspicion cloaks him due to circumstances; admitted. But bring this wild theory into daylight and it evaporates into insignificance. It would be dismissed as lunacy by any sensible court. It's far too bizarre and alien to anything we've ever encountered."
"Is it?" Ethel shot back, her voice dripping with suggestion.
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"What are you getting at?"
"Isn't it obvious?" she responded. "Across the tapestry of global myths and legends linger tales of those dubbed vampires – not always completely consumed by darkness – who are drawn by some nocturnal urge to slide silently into defenseless chambers, feasting off the living essence of the unwary as they sleep. Empowered by their plundered vitality, these pale intruders slip back into the shadows. Such creatures have lips crimsoned with stolen life; some say they cannot lie serene in death but revisit old domains long after they're thought gone from this world. Those they've visited waste away without cause – a mystery that prompts physicians to mutter 'consumption' as a convenient diagnosis. History whispers of times when villagers' suspicions rose to fever pitch and under a devout priest’s guidance ventured in holy procession to unearth suspicious graves. And there beneath the soil lay a ghastly revelation: coffins decayed, wilted flowers entwined in hair now turned black – yet their flesh unspoiled, absent of worm or rot, their cold but sensuous lips still slick with traces of blood."
Ernest found himself unexpectedly swept up by her tale, which echoed his own eerie experiences. Yet, stubborn as ever, he resisted conceding to her points.
"Look, I get it, I do. Your words pack a punch," he conceded, a note of skepticism in his voice. "But come on, you even call them legends yourself. They're not rooted in anything you can touch or see, and you can't really expect someone educated in the cold logic of modern science to embrace these ancient superstitions as truth!"
"Why not?" she shot back with a challenge in her eyes. "Modern-day wizards in lab coats have turned once absurd medieval fantasies into our reality. Alchemist dreams of turning lead into gold don't seem far-fetched anymore, and radium has brought us a step closer to cracking the secret of eternal movement—stuff they thought was pure fiction! Hell, even the bedrock math we thought was unshakeable has cracks; there are brainiacs arguing whether we got the basics of trigonometry all wrong. And some of the sharpest minds who dissect nature’s soul are dabbling with ghosts and spirits—makes you wonder, doesn’t it? We're breaking free from the superficial scoffing that defined last century's mindset. Our reality is morphing back into a realm filled with awe but also shadowed by ancient fears—nightmares and bogeymen wearing shiny new suits."
With each word sinking deep, Ernest's mood turned pensive. "You might be onto something," he admitted cautiously. He began to pace, the room becoming a cage for his spiraling thoughts as he blurted out: "But still, your theory seems wildly far-fetched. Reginald—a bloodsucker? It's downright laughable! If you had spun me a yarn about such monsters lurking in some forgotten crevice of the world, sure, we could've had a nice theoretical chat about it; but here? In the looming shadow of the Flatiron—amidst all this steel and concrete? Nah!"
She responded, her voice tinged with a fiery conviction, "Think about it—these things have always been around. Not just lurking in the dingy corners of the Dark Ages, but they've been a constant, hovering presence through every era, every land. Each culture has its own tales of these beings, each unique yet strangely similar. And when you come across an idea, something so tenacious it grips tight to humanity's consciousness no matter how bizarre or fanciful it appears—that idea that keeps clawing its way back through the ages—don't you have to wonder if there might be some sliver of truth rooted in the vastness of human experience?"
Ernest furrowed his brow as it deepened with shadowy lines of stress prematurely etched into his skin. The pallor of his face was startling—a ghostly mask that spoke volumes of inner turmoil. He looked fragile, breakable; a man ensnared in the twisted passageways of a maze with not a single flicker of light to guide him out. Despite the fortress of his scientific beliefs being stormed, he couldn't quite shake off the unsettling notion that she might have hit upon a fragment of truth.
"Nevertheless," he countered with a flicker of defiance lighting up his eyes, "your so-called vampires drain life fluid; but someone like Reginald, if he is indeed what you suggest, he feasts on something far more elusive—the very essence of our thoughts! How can one being extract from another's cerebrum something as insubstantial and profound as the act of thinking?"
There was no missing the intense gleam in her eyes as she shot back with certainty resonating in every word, "Ah, but you're missing the bigger picture here. Thoughts are the rawest form of energy we possess—they're more vital than blood could ever be!"